Send American-japanese to prison?

Send the American-Japaneses to "prison" during WW2

  • Wrong (Why not?)

    Votes: 17 68.0%
  • Right (Why?)

    Votes: 8 32.0%

  • Total voters
    25
bulldogg said:
And as another member pointed out there were some Germans and Italians interned as well.

(1) How many German-Americans could be interned? The Americans had a severe problem on their hands. Americans of ethnic German descent represented the largest ethnic minority in the United States and between 20-40 percent of the population (these were the days prior to the immigration of Chavez and his Mexican friends). Sorta hard running a war when whole states like North Dakota have to be interned...along with men like Eisenhower, Truman and Roosevelt. What about the millions of outright Germany supporters like Lindbergh or the Kennedys?

(2) German passport holders and the more visibly German Americans were interned. Vhat? Ja, zat is right. Old Hans waz put in za internment camp viz his Axis buddies. Germans like Marlene Dietrich had to jump up and down screaming how much they hate "Squareheads" to avoid a concentration camp. the "Japs" did not have that luxury.

(3) Racial differences/characteristics? Not even the SS Racial Purity Department could have helped legislators here. How are you going to separate German-Americans from the non-German-American population? Arrest everyone who is white? Sounds like a policy for Farrakhan. What could they do? Arrest everyone with a German-sounding last name. Take a look at a Chicago phonebook or any phonebook for that matter. More Muellers, Meyers and Schulzes than here in Germany. In any case, all of these people were magically transformed into Dutch or Swiss. This problem makes it clear why the "Japs" were targeted so comprehensively. I am sure that Himmler was pleased and nodding in agreement. Hey, did IBM help catalogue the Japanese-Americans?

http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/itintern.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American
 
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LeEnfield said:
All countries interned people from the countries that they went to war with, it was not just America.

Sure, but the question is: do you intern ethnic minorities that do not have enemy citizenship? That is, is a second or third generation German-American or Japanese-American with an American passport the "enemy"? Interning foreign aliens (when they are reclassified as enemy belligerents) is normal and understandable.

Hey, at least the Americans interned them and did not kill them like the Czechs, Poles and Soviets.
 
Times were uncertain, and with out the levels of information and communications that we have today, then they took the safest option open to them. Hindsight is always a wonderful thing but they did not have that option open to them.
 
LeEnfield said:
Times were uncertain, and with out the levels of information and communications that we have today, then they took the safest option open to them. Hindsight is always a wonderful thing but they did not have that option open to them.

Sure...but with this type of logic (ie. convicting a group collectively on the basis of race) you get into some really controversial territory. I also do not understand the hindsight argument. What in hindsight? That Japanese-Americans were not in league with Hirohito and planning on blowing up factories? That should have been obvious.

As far as "safest options" is concerned, the best way to protect the US against another terror attack would therefore be the following: rounding up all Muslims and Arab-looking Americans and putting them in camps. The "safest option" is not necessarily a morally good nor acceptable option.
 
How was it supposed to be obvious in 1942 when hostilities had just begun? How? Hindsight makes one omniscient but in 1942 things were not obvious no matter what you choose to believe. I am not haunted nor feel shame for actions prior to my birth. They did what they thought was right at the time and were very humane when you take into consideration what others did at this time.
 
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bulldogg said:
How was it supposed to be obvious in 1942 when hostilities had just begun? How? Hindsight makes one omniscient but in 1942 things were not obvious no matter what you choose to believe. I am not haunted nor feel shame for actions prior to my birth. They did what they thought was right at the time and were very humane when you take into consideration what others did at this time.

(1) Legal problems: How do you change the American legal system to make some citizens guilty before proven innocent? How do you change the American legal system to target a group of citizens on racial grounds using physical facial differences or a last name? Remember we are talking about American citizens and not those living in occupied territories. They were American citizens and legally entitled to the rights guaranteed by the constitution: "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States". It is no wonder that Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 was later considered by many to be unconstitutional. [Was it ever repealed?]

(2) Civilians & War - A Lesson from the Geneva Convention: [Nuremberg established that the Geneva Convention could be instituted ex post facto]. Article 79 states: The Parties to the conflict shall not intern protected persons, except in accordance with the provisions of Articles. A list of reasons and controls are offered. In the US case, I am not even sure how the Japanese or German Americans were classified...they did not fall under the status of enemy belligerent or enemy non-combatant. They were citizens and protected by the constitution.

(3) Hindsight? Assuming internment was temporarily legal or understandable, which it was not, what factors could possibly have warranted the actions in the first place? What evidence at the time revealed that a "5th Column" existed? None. Internment was based on spurious racist arguments. It was odd that Roosevelt supported policies at home that he blasted as immoral on the international stage. The more I think about Roosevelt, the more disgusted I become. For me, just more wartime hysteria and hypocrisy. [See below for more on the "5th Column"]

(4) At least Japanese internment was not as bad as in other countries? Sure. But is this really an argument? Why would Americans want to compare any of their actions with Stalin's Gulags, Hitler's Camps, or Polish, Czech or Serbian ethnic cleansing operations? The fact that this type of argumentation even exists is an admission of how immoral some American actions actually were. Do Americans really want to judge themselves according to the worst examples of inhumanity in history?

Here are some interesting facts:

(1) Some internment prior to war: "Upon the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Presidential Proclamations 2525 (Japanese), 2526 (German) and 2527 (Italian) were signed. Many homes were raided using information from the CDI, and hundreds of aliens were in custody by the end of the day, including Germans and Italians (although war was not declared on Germany or Italy until December 11)".

(2) Japanese "guilt" on race grounds: Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, who administered the internment program, repeatedly told newspapers that "A Jap's a Jap" and testified to Congress, "I don't want any of them (persons of Japanese ancestry) here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty ... It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty. ... But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map."

(3) Strange simularities to the Holocaust: "Most internees suffered significant property losses. Upon evacuation, the Japanese American internees were told that they could bring only as many articles of clothing, toiletries, and other personal effects as they could carry....Some Japanese American farmers had to sell their property in a matter of days, for pennies on the dollar. In these cases, the land speculators who bought the land made huge profits."

The German 5th Column as an Explanation: I am not going to write a great deal on this issue...suffice to say that it is yet another historical hoax. Germans in Czechoslovakia or Poland, for example, formed political organizations during the 1920s and 1930s and had contacts with Nazi-Germany. So what. This type of behavoiur was true of much of Europe. Ukranians and Russians even formed anti-Communist groups that were sponsored by the western democracies and operated in Stalin's prison state. Getting back to the Germans, the 1920s and 1930s witnessed two decades of Czech and Polish persecution...programs that left thousands of Germans dead, raped and property-free. Any even slightly objective account of German or Ukranian political activities has to recognize (a) the inalienable human right to pursue political activities and (b) that these groups only did so because they were persecuted in the first place and (c) that these groups did not represent a threat to the perpetrators...other than by natural demographic weight.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
 
Ollie I am going to be straight with you. I am having a very difficult time being lectured about how my country treated Japanese from a German. So I am going to stop talking to you on this thread because my temper is getting the better of my tongue. Goodluck tilting at windmills.
 
bulldogg said:
Ollie I am going to be straight with you. I am having a very difficult time being lectured about how my country treated Japanese from a German. So I am going to stop talking to you on this thread because my temper is getting the better of my tongue. Goodluck tilting at windmills.

Bulldogg...why all the emotion? Why did I strike a nerve?

(1) This is just history and history as an academic discipline is basically the study of power in society. I am only presenting an argument based on certain things that happened or were said or according to accepted standards. None of this has any bearing on you or the American people as an entity.

(2) Why should I not analyse American history? Events happen. These events exhibit certain comprehensible elements. These elements can be analysed and explanations constructed. These explanations can then be judged according to their logic consistency. This is science...human science...nothing more.

(3) One thing, Bulldogg. Why should Germans not think about American history? Why should Americans not think about German history? Should the study of history be nationally-driven? Do we really only want national history? The study of history would be dull and pointless.

[By the way, and I do not want to step on anyone, Americans write more about German history than the other way around. I can live with that. I even like it. The more the better. And even the totally anti-German stuff that turns my parents and grandparents (or me) into monsters. Those arguments are the best. They help in determining a more complete truth or a better understanding of what really happened.]

One more thing: The wiki source shows that my post was in all probability the opinion of many Americans.
 
I didn't read the previous posts so i guess this was listed before, the FBI concluded an investigation saying that the japanese americans were not a security threat, why would anyone throw that out the window? I'm guessing FDR didn't want to do it but maybe he had to calm down the mild racism of having asians living next to white people during a time of war. So interment was the only way anything could be legitimately done to quell the public's fear. I don't like it and no one today would ever want to do the same thing to civilian populations. Simply arresting a handful and sending them off to detention camps would've sent enough of a scare to the japanese without violating the human rights of everbody in that population.
 
War Machine....You have to put all this in context with the time and what was happening. The Japanese had just made a seek attack on America and every one was ******** off, and know one was sure just who they could or could not trust. So until they had time to sort it all out they were put into internment camps, now had they been left in place there was strong chance of them being attacked just for being Japanese and there was not the time or the people to protect them. Okay some officials turned to their advantage, which was wrong, but on the whole I never heard of any of them being killed or even badly mistreated, can you say the same for the civilian people from the Allied Countries that fell into Japanese hands.
 
LeEnfield said:
War Machine....You have to put all this in context with the time and what was happening. The Japanese had just made a seek attack on America and every one was ******** off, and know one was sure just who they could or could not trust. So until they had time to sort it all out they were put into internment camps, now had they been left in place there was strong chance of them being attacked just for being Japanese and there was not the time or the people to protect them. Okay some officials turned to their advantage, which was wrong, but on the whole I never heard of any of them being killed or even badly mistreated, can you say the same for the civilian people from the Allied Countries that fell into Japanese hands.

The internment of the Japanese was legal and normal. The internment of Americans who looked Japanese was not. We can rationalize the issue. We can even bring up the brutal internment methods used by the Japanese (good issue). We will however always be drawn back to the problem that the Americans were interning Americans.
 
I know of a number of Britons that were interred during WW2, I used to work with one of them, he had been Mosley personal bodyguard and was sent to the Isle Of Man for the whole duration of the war.
 
People don't get paid back thousands of dollars of reperations by the federal government because they were treated well. The japanese who moved to places like manzinar lost their property and any businesses they owned. Nobody wanted to go to the internment camps but they were forced to. There might have been some cause for the non native japanese americans to be imprisoned but not the ones born here who have never been to japan.

Concentration camps for civilians are the result of paranoia and racism if applied on a large scale. If you had a small selection of people placed in camps for some legal suspicions during a war, then maybe you have a case. But entire demographics? People seriously couldn't find any other way to handle the situation in the country that built an atomic weapon in 4 years?
 
I would rather not take hte chance when the chance of invasion back then was pretty decent. So why not pack up people that might be a threat to us if the Japanese do invade. Just like if the Mexicans invaded today, after seeing all those dam flags during the parades I'd have to say id be for putting em in camps to. You dont want enemys among you.
 
WarMachine......If you had read my other posts you would see that all countries interred people of doubtful allegiance. As far paying out money to Japanese Americans that they interned, well whats wrong in that, they also paid huge sums in later years to the American Indians, are they saying what they did all that time ago was wrong and if they are will, they give them back all the land that they took .
 
Ok, i didn't say anything was wrong with paying reparations to people who were wronged, i'm talking about the reason that it was necessary that was the problem.

You guys know your history, the chance of japanese invasion of american states, 0.1%. The public's concern for japanese invasion and espionage 110%. Does paranoia justify their actions? If so how come americans of german descent who in some cases still spoke german at home weren't interned? I think it was stupid and racist and there isn't any point in trying to justify it in retrospect anymore. It's like justifying the jim crow laws as a sufficient reaction to emancipation of blacks because the public was worried that blacks would somehow destroy their society and reacted in manner that we know was wrong, but couldn't be helped. See, that's plain wrong.
 
Warmachine, where did you get those figures? Particularly I would like to know the source for your claim.
 
WarMachine said:
You guys know your history, the chance of japanese invasion of american states, 0.1%. The public's concern for japanese invasion and espionage 110%. Does paranoia justify their actions?

The main problem that America was facing was that espionage was an ever present danger. Sensitive information from Japanese spies could sink ships and worse.

WarMachine said:
If so how come americans of german descent who in some cases still spoke german at home weren't interned?

My family name is unmistakably German but my Grandparents and Parents claimed Dutch heritage during the war just for the reason that a lot of people were curious about certain names.


WarMachine said:
I think it was stupid and racist and there isn't any point in trying to justify it in retrospect anymore. It's like justifying the jim crow laws as a sufficient reaction to emancipation of blacks because the public was worried that blacks would somehow destroy their society and reacted in manner that we know was wrong, but couldn't be helped. See, that's plain wrong.

Don't be so hasty in judging people of the time. There's no way we can put ourselves in their place after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. That is one reason the Japanese were so much more suspect than Europeans. The Germans and Italians didn't bomb Pearl, they just didn't trust people who were that deceptive.

And let's not fight the Civil War again, there were no victors.
 
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